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The True Identity of George Ravenscroft, Glassman

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2016

Rosemary Rendel
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Extract

This paper is a tribute to two people whose perceptive and persevering research I have merely continued. Sister Francis Agnes Onslow, now of the Poor Clare Convent, Woodchester, using Franciscan sources more than ten years ago, thought that George Ravenscroft had been wrongly identified but was not able to prove her hypothesis because the Douai College diaries after 1654 are missing for a long period. The late Patrick Knell, working on the Ravenscroft family of Barnet, Herts, as an example of ‘schismatic’ Catholic parents who yet educated all their sons at Catholic colleges abroad, also correctly identified the glassman. The importance of this identification passed him by, however, because he was not familiar with the history of glass and did not think, in consequence, to cross-reference the recusant sources he was using with the State Papers Venetian in the Public Record Office. It is an indication of the limited sources used in the past by historians of art that, in spite of this information being available, it was possible for George Ravenscroft, the man who initiated English lead crystal in the third quarter of the seventeenth century, to remain wrongly identified for nearly fifty years.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , October 1975 , pp. 101 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1975

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References

Notes

1 Franciscana, contr, by Richard Trappes-Lomax (CRS, 24).

2 Knell, P.R.P., ‘A 17th century schismatic and his Catholic family’: London Recusant vol. 1, no. 2, p. 57. Details of the catalogue in the Vatican Archives are given in note 23 at the end of this article.Google Scholar

3 Thorpe, History of English and Irish Glass (2 vols, 1929). Thorpe was the Keeper of Ceramics at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

4 The Rev. Rev.Ravenscroft, R. Bathurst and Ravenscroft, W., The Family of Ravenscroft (privately printed, London, 1915)Google Scholar. This should be compared with W. Ravenscroft, Some Ravenscrofts (privately printed, 1929), which is more accurate about the Barnet branch of the Ravenscrofts. For an analysis of some of the omissions and confusions in these two family histories, see my paper ‘Who was George Ravenscroft?’ to the Glass Circle of 21 March 1974.

5 DNB.

6 I am grateful to a CRS member attending the 1974 Oxford Conference for pointing out that this might be connected with Francis’ eldest sister Thomasine, who became a Franciscan four years after he was born ; she could therefore have stood godmother at his baptism and been instrumental in suggesting this name. Cf. note 1 above.

7 Calendars to the State Papers Venetian, 1651-74. I am grateful to Dr Astone Gasparetto of Venice, who has most generously transcribed despatches in the Venetian State Archives which complement the English Calendars.

8 H.M.C. Report, 1913. MSS. of Alban G. Finch.

9 I am further indebted to Dr Astone Gasparetto for discovering this correspondence between Venice, Florence and Pisa in the Venetian State Archives and transcribing the relevant extracts for me.

10 DNB for both Henry Killigrew and his brother Thomas, two sons of Sir Robert KilHgrew and his wife Mary Woodhouse.

11 H.M.C. Report, no. 11, app. 2, p. 16 (see also note 2 above).

12 PRO, Lease DL 47/4.